Wikipedia:Featured article review/Walden–Wallkill Rail Trail/archive1

Walden–Wallkill Rail Trail

Walden–Wallkill Rail Trail (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

As of 21 June 2024, 07:45 (UTC), this page is active and open for discussion. A FAR coordinator will advance or close this nomination when consensus is reached.

• Featured article candidates/Walden–Wallkill Rail Trail/archive1

• Featured article review/Walden–Wallkill Rail Trail/archive1

Notified: Gyrobo, WikiProject Cycling, WikiProject Trains, WikiProject Hiking trails, WikiProject Hudson Valley, 2023-11-20

I am nominating this featured article for review because the article has not been updated with post-2012 information. No response when I posted on the talk page, and the article has not been edited since 2021. Z1720 (talk) 01:07, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

• I find the pre-trail history to be quite lacking. We have all of 2 sentences for a rail line that operated for 111 years. The primary topic here is the trail, but it would not be a comprehensive article in my opinion without at least a little history of the corridor before it became a trail. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 01:19, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

  I'm not involved with the article at all prior to this, and only saw the review when it came up on WP Hudson Valley, and I concur with Trainsandotherthings. While I did just do a quick search and found coverage that can be used to update the article past 2012, since the repairs were done following a grant and planned work (as of 2023) is going to connect it to various other trails on the Hudson River through property related to the Wallkill prison, it really needs pre-trail history to be comprehensive. Reconrabbit 01:56, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

  For the history of the trail before it was a trail, I'm not sure what exactly we're looking for here. I feel like anything more than a cursory view of the railroad would be more appropriate for Wallkill Valley Railroad, since this article is supposed to be a comprehensive and complete look at the trail and not the railroad.

  There is information in the article about the prisons that predated the trail, if we're talking about stuff that exists outside of the railroad. It's been a while since I wrote the article but I remember pouring through all the remaining local newspapers that still existed from that era in the Haviland Heidgerd Historical Collection as well as Listen to the Whistle to get what I could about the pre-trail era.

  If the goal of a featured article is to be as comprehensive as possible with extant sources then yeah there's a little that can be added about the last few years but I'm not sure any additional sources exist for the pre-trail history around this specific part of the railroad. Gyrobo (talk) 15:23, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

  Wanted to post again to set expectations and give an update, I'm planning to spend some time updating the article over the weekend with more recent references. Gyrobo (talk) 21:24, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

  Providence and Worcester Railroad gives a paragraph to the preceding Blackstone Canal, for instance. The former rail line is intrinsically linked with the rail trail as they both occupied the same right of way, so I would expect more than 2 sentences of background to meet the featured article criteria, specifically 1b which says comprehensive: it neglects no major facts or details and places the subject in context (emphasis added). Trainsandotherthings (talk) 21:03, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

  That makes sense. I've added some more about the railroad that I think might give the appropriate context for the rest of the article, and broke up the history section into subsections to make things a little more understandable. I'll take a pass through it tomorrow to finesse the content a little better, and I want to see if there are enough sources to buttress the more recent history a bit. But I think it's looking a lot better. Gyrobo (talk) 02:48, 4 March 2024 (UTC)